An 8-year-old boy drew a superhero named Fever Fighter during cancer treatment. Years later, it’s helping save lives.

A month into Ethan Washburn’s treatment at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital®, his second-grade teacher assigned a science project. His twin brother, Cooper, wanted to explore conductivity using batteries and magnets. Ethan decided he’d do his project about his illness.

He was 7 in 2010 when he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL, the most common childhood cancer. For his project, Ethan wrote a one-page essay he titled, “My Leukemia,” which he’d nicknamed “Leu.”

In careful handwriting, he explained how blood cells work — and how leukemia throws everything off balance. He ended: “The doctors say I’ll be okay one day, but I have to keep fighting for a while to beat up Leu and kick him out of my body.”

Ethan’s doctor arranged a visit to the hematology lab so he could see his own blood cells under a microscope. Ethan wore the white lab coat he’d received for Christmas, his name stitched on it, and a baseball cap on his bald head. 

He printed the image and glued it to the upper right corner of his tri-fold board. He drew diagrams of blood cells, labeling one: “I’m a White Blood Cell. Some people call me a Fighter Cell. My job is to fight off infection in your body.” 

He sculpted a bone from white foam and decorated it with cartoon blood cells, including a fierce-faced leukemia blast cell brandishing a sword — the villain. That’s how it felt sometimes. Like he was battling a bad guy. 

Leu attacked his blood and lobbed bouts of nausea, aches, exhaustion and fever at him. But Ethan was a big fan of superheroes. He knew how these stories ended. 

Since Ethan couldn’t attend school, Cooper presented his project for him. Ethan was sure he’d win. But a project about the lifecycle of a ladybug took the top prize.

“That must’ve been one impressive ladybug,” Ethan joked later. He didn’t win the science fair. But he did beat Leu.

‘A sense of hope’

It started just after Christmas in 2009. Usually always on the go, Ethan sat instead of playing at school. He fell asleep in the car on the way home.

The pediatrician treated him for a sinus infection, but his mom, Missy, was still worried. Weeks later, Ethan spiked a fever. His skin grayed. A bruise-like mark bloomed on his side — broken blood vessels beneath the surface.

Bloodwork confirmed Ethan’s red and white blood cell counts and platelets were dangerously low. A diagnosis of leukemia explained Ethan’s pallor, fever and that bruise — petechiae, a sign his blood wasn’t clotting.

Missy remembers her husband Kevin’s hand on her back, but the world seemed to go dark. The pediatrician had contacted St. Jude; they should go home, pack a bag and go straight there. 

Missy doesn’t remember the drive home or to St. Jude, only that Ethan fell asleep in the back seat. They live locally and knew about St. Jude. Kevin could hardly watch the commercials; they were too sad. Missy’s friend in high school had been treated there. She watched terrified as Kevin carried Ethan through the lobby doors at St. Jude.

“When you step into that hospital,” Missy said, “there is a sense of hope.”

After a bone marrow aspiration, Ethan woke groggy and mispronounced “bone marrow,” asking, “Did they get me back my bow and arrow?” His medical team developed a treatment plan; Ethan’s medical binder quickly growing to inches thick. A central line was placed. Chemotherapy began the next day.

“Everything moved fast,” Kevin said. “It was literally like drinking from a firehose trying to take it all in.”

That first night, as Missy tucked Ethan into his hospital bed, she heard him praying —not for himself but for his parents to be all right. 

Still a kid

Ethan and Cooper had always loved superheroes. As toddlers, they trick-or-treated in red-and-blue webbed bodysuits. They wore capes, invented their own characters and watched superhero movies with their dad. They believed in the good guys.

At St. Jude, cancer was the villain. Treatment was the fight. “It is tough to conceive of fighting something you can’t see or touch,” Kevin said. He didn’t feel heroic. He felt helpless. Ethan put his arm around him and said, “Dad, it’s going to be OK.”

When chemotherapy caused Ethan’s hair to fall out in clumps, he reassured his mom, “It’s OK – it doesn’t hurt.” He asked for a mohawk. Eventually even that fell out. 

After a week inpatient, Ethan continued treatment as an outpatient. Fridays meant lab tests, chemotherapy and waiting. Not every week brought good news. The family turned weekly blood draws to measure Ethan’s counts into a game. Whoever guessed closest without going over got to pick where they ate dinner.

Ethan filled the hours during treatment by drawing, watching cooking shows and replaying the movie, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” so often the DVD cracked. He remembers playing video games with Cooper and riding his IV pole down the hallways.

“I definitely appreciate the lengths St. Jude went to not make it feel as clinical as it could have,” Ethan said later. “I could still be a kid.”

A few weeks after his 8th birthday, Ethan handed his mom an envelope holding his birthday money. Maybe $10 or $15. He asked her, “When we’re at the hospital again, can you please give it to the man in charge so he can help someone else?”

Later at St. Jude, when Ethan spotted the head of ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness organization for St. Jude, he said, “Mom, that’s the money man!” “Here,” Ethan said, handing over the envelope, “I want to give this to you to help sick kids.”

That instinct never left. The family shared their story and participated in fundraising events. Kevin served as a patient representative on St. Jude committees; Missy mentored other parents. “We’ll never be able to give back enough,” she said. “We will forever be a St. Jude family.”

What they didn’t know yet was that a drawing of a superhero made out of the same instinct that led Ethan to give away his birthday money would become his most powerful way of helping other kids. 

A child’s drawing

In summer 2010, while still in treatment, Ethan drew a caped superhero in red and orange, flames shooting from his head, and named him Fever Fighter. “My child logic at the time was that everyone gets fevers,” he said. “If you were in my position, it’s worse than anyone else getting a fever.” For Ethan, with a weakened immune system, any fever meant admission to St. Jude. Fever Fighter was impervious. 

At the time, it was just a drawing, but Fever Fighter would take on a life of its own, while Ethan got on with his.

After treatment, Ethan returned to school for third grade, still bald but allowed to wear hats in class until it grew back. He’s always been shy. At St. Jude events, he let his parents do the speaking. At school, he didn’t talk much about his cancer. He wanted to be treated like everyone else.

The twins graduated from high school in 2020. At the University of Memphis, Ethan majored in Japanese language and culture — he was a fan of anime and manga — and studied in Nagoya his senior year. Cooper became an engineer. Ethan hopes to work in Japan, maybe teaching.

Ethan never imagined the Fever Fighter would become a symbol of courage for St. Jude, most notably as the mascot of St. Jude PLAY LIVE, a global charity team for content creators and gamers to raise money to support treatment and research at St. Jude. His character appears on merchandise, including a 10-inch vinyl figure. “It’s wild how this thing has taken off,” Kevin said. 

Ethan marvels at it all. “It’s cool to see the good he’s doing since that’s what superheroes do,” he said. At LA Comic Con in September 2025, Ethan, St. Jude and creator platform Tongal announced an animated series based on Fever Fighter, with plans to expand into a universe of patient-created characters. 

Looking back, Ethan doesn’t talk about Fever Fighter as his legacy but a force of its own. “It feels good to know Fever Fighter is making a difference,” Ethan said. At 23, he has shown no evidence of cancer since treatment. 

Ethan doesn’t see himself as extraordinary. “It was a part of my childhood,” he said. “It is what it is.” Ethan has a job at a dog kennel, responsibilities and plans for his future. He has a life to live.

So does Fever Fighter — at St. Jude, as part of events and campaigns, and in the lives of young patients. A superhero created by an 8-year-old who understood something profound: Even the smallest fighters can make a big difference.